Journey to Recovery from Childhood Abuse

Silent Screams

My cold simply refuses to go away. It has moved to my voice box, and now I have lost my voice … again. I first came down with laryngitis as soon as I started having flashbacks. My therapist said that it was a metaphor for my childhood – that I had “lost my voice” as a child.

This morning, my eight-year-old son jumped out at me and scared me. I tried to scream, but nothing came out. This triggered me, and I started crying. There is nothing worse than putting all you have into a scream but having no sound come out. Again, it is such a fitting metaphor for my childhood.

I used to have silent scream nightmares a lot before entering into therapy. People would be chasing me or hurting me in one manner or another. I would scream with all of my might, but nothing would come out. I eventually developed lucid dreaming and learned that, if I would keep screaming and screaming in my dream, even though it was silent, would eventually make a noise that would wake me up. I have had so many dreams where I just kept screaming that silent scream until I awakened in a cold sweat in my bed.

Do any of you have silent scream dreams? I would guess that they are probably pretty common among child abuse survivors because a “silent scream” is such a fitting metaphor for an abused child.

Yes, I have silent screams that are so frustrating. Mine too are a reflection of my childhood. I have woken up in cold sweats. Other times, I wake myself up by screaming. I used to do that alot, but now they are silent. The dreams are quite disturbing.

I don’t have silent scream dreams, but I do have a problem with one of my characters taking away my voice. There are plenty of times when I am feeling something inside that *I* can’t consciously name or even describe, and my voice is completely stolen, even to the point that I can’t even open my mouth. My artist/writer character wrote a poem once in which part goes like this:
****possible trigger****
Where, sitting, she lets the tears fall
A silent river of demons inside
So huge unrelenting and forceful they are
That the only thing she can let herself say
Is the desperate scream trailing silently down
****end trigger****

Being forced to withold something as big as a scream causes some pretty huge feelings on top of those causing the scream. I have yet to actually work on this myself, but I know it’s there, and I understand completely where you’re coming from.

Wow. Thank you for sharing this poem, mamarosebud. This says so much of what is inside of me– I haven’t been able to put into words or pictures the mess inside, and you and others here give me relief by sharing. Thank you!

I have had them over and over again. They are horrible and leave you feeling like you have nothing and are powerless. Also, whenever my mom used to come visit, (we no longer have any contact), I would lose my voice completely everytime. After years of working on things, the silent scream nightmares seem to be going away.

I used to have dreams where I’d scream and scream, but make only little squeaking sounds. Eventually, I found that I was making these exact sounds in reality while dreaming, and it was because the vocal cords are paralyzed along with the body while in REM sleep. That discovery led to me being able to scream louder while dreaming, loud enough to push through the paralysis, so that the sound would wake me up.

I did have a strange obsession with screaming when young. I would often have an urge to scream, and I’d have to make up a game that made it okay to yell. At one point, I found that if I buried my head in my pillow, I could scream as loud as I wanted, and no one would hear me and freak out. I even set a tape recorder up to make sure that I didn’t make any sound while doing this. I always thought it was a strange desire, but now . . . knowing what happened to me during childhood . . . it makes perfect sense.

my dreams usually involve me being frozen, doing nothing to stop the abuse, almost as though I am cooperating, and sometimes did cooperate. Rather than screaming, I freeze, don’t move, say nothing. It wasn’t safe in my family to show emotions, good or bad, so I guess the freezing part reflects that.

I have had many dreams in which as soon as the first scream, I’m aware that I am dreaming because instead of a scream, I hear a drunken-like ahhaaaa. So, in my dream, I know that if I keep screaming, that guttural sound will wake me up, so I keep screaming until the sound actually wakes me up. I’m always terrified and the struggle to wake up, makes me forget what the dream was about. It’s awful.

I used to have the screaming dreams, but right now my recurring dream is pulling gum out of my mouth. It’s stuck really badly and fills my whole mouth and throat, and no matter how much I pull out, there’s always more.

That’s how things feel right now – however much I remember, there’s always more behind it.

I’ve woken up screaming before, but I don’t think I’ve dreamt silent screaming before. My nightmares always involve being chased by something bad so I need to run and hide and not make any noise so I won’t be found.

I can’t sleep or even doze off without having nightmares. I have silent screams, screaming out loud screams, yelling out really strange words, waking up convinced someone is shaking me, waking up hearing someone yelling my name, waking up doing really odd motions ~ recently I woke up in a silent scream while my body was acting out climbing up a ladder.

I don’t think I’ve had silent scream dreams before. In my dreams I wouldn’t even be able to form a scream. It mostly remains a lump in my throat. I think that’s because I went through a lot of things in silence. I told myself that if I didn’t scream or cry or react, it would mean that what they were doing didn’t matter. Staying silent and not resisting would keep me safe.

As for waking up from my dreams, I usually wake up silently as well. Anxious but silent. The dream has to be extremely intense for me to make a sound in real life. Even then I’m mostly just whimpering, and occasionally saying “no”.

For me the “silent scream” stuff was part of my abuse- it took me a long time to realize what was actually going on (in remembering). I was injected w/something into my throat that paralyzed my voicebox during some of the more medical- related stuff- and then tortured. It was horrible. I also get this feeling like- I desperately need to scream but I can’t, I just can’t. Even in therapy where my therapist encouraged me to scream I generally find I can’t. And when I have flashbacks even w/the desire to scream I can’t. It’s horrid.

I used to have screaming dreams. I can recall having them about 5-10 times as a boy before I hit puberty. There was a feeling around me that thousands of people we dying and a slow rolling scream would start quietly and then build into an all encompassing scream that completely gripped me in a lucid state. Then just as it started the screams would start to fade until there was an infinite silence. The silence always seemed to me to be more horrific than the screaming. As if the thousands of people had died and I couldn’t save them/only I was left. The silence would hold me locked in a terrified state even when I awoke couldn’t shake the feeling of the pervasive horrific silence.